Van Lines & MovingReviews of internationalvanlines.net

Used this company due to its recommendation on Forbes. This was a mistake. I wish I'd never heard of them. I wish I could give them negative stars. I hope this review convinces at least one person to not go with them. After taking our deposit, they didn't communicate until less than 48 before the move only to double the price, then tell us that because it was less than 48 hours before the move we couldn't cancel without losing our deposit. Upon review (once we weren't scrambling to get things done), they had doubled or tripled the counts of several of our items, and as they said, "if we overestimate your move cost, we will not refund you." Somehow re-packing (literally putting smaller boxes into larger boxes) reduced the cost by $4k without removing anything. Magical. On the day of the move, the movers took all of the furniture we were planning to throw away at no additional cost because they recognized that we'd been overcharged so much. Our items did not begin to ship until 3 weeks after we arrived at our new home. They arrived 20 business days after our scheduled date, 1 day before IVL would have been in breach of contract. No communication, no returned calls or emails. IVL was the worst and most stressful part of our move. Do not use this company.

Don't buy the reviews on Forbes or any publication- look at Yelp. I used them for a move from Dallas to NYC and it was a disaster. Impossible to get in touch and coordinate once you pay a deposit. I have over $2k of damaged or missing items. The delivery guy held my items hostage- he wouldn't unload a truck until I signed a form saying everything was delivered. So now my claims for damaged / missing items aren't valid. This is a sham of a company.

Stay clear of this business – at all costs! Locked in move in Feb for April 2024 move. Very tight schedule and little room for error. Paid $1600 deposit Everything seemed professionally handled – so far. I’d done my online research. Boy, was I wrong! Got late Friday afternoon phone call one week prior to move and was told that they canceled the move. Couldn’t pull it off and had no trucks in my area. Got a “we’re sorry” and a promise of my deposit back. I’m now totally screwed and scrambling to find another company on short notice and likely at a higher price point for me. They were happy to promise the moon and keep my money for 2 months and then cancel and leave me in a HUGE pickle Never had less professional service. A disgrace, really. I implore you to stay clear of this company for your own sake

This company is dishonest; they scammed me for more than $3000. Things started out well: they made a good "binding" estimate of the volume of my things, which I agreed to (and later found was pretty accurate). I picked them over 2 other moving companies, partly on the basis of their then-honest reputation (which I now know is undeserved). On pick-up day, things started to go wrong. After walking briefly through our building, the pickup foreman told me he thought the estimate was wrong (his company, IVL's, own estimate!) and forced me to sign a paper that agreed to pay for more than we had already agreed to. This was very rough and unpleasant; he told me if I didn't sign, IVL wouldn't move our stuff. I argued with him for more than an hour, but finally gave in -- what else could I do? We *had* to move that day -- I had driven more than 1000 miles to the pickup point (I was already living at our destination), and I had no way (then) to prove the original estimate was correct. They loaded our things into 2 separate bob-tail trucks, loosely, so there was no way to measure the actual volume. (But I did verify the actual volume of our things later; see below). So I paid the extra $3379, and our things got moved. At our destination, I went into the delivery semi-truck trailer (which was different than the 2 smaller bob-tail trucks that had picked up our things), and measured the space where our things had just been unloaded from, accurately with a tape measure, and it came out even smaller than the original estimate! So the pickup foreman's one-glance-at-our-things estimate was completely wrong, and his volume computation from his list-of-our-things-loaded was wrong, too -- and I never should have had to pay that additional $3379. I explained all this to IVL, and they opened a "review", and I do believe the person analyzing the information for the review acted honestly and in good faith, but she was fed information from dishonest people like the pickup foreman. He had padded the size of many of our things, such as more than 40 stackable cardboard flats we had which are 2 cubic feet each, but which he marked as (and charged me for) 11 cubic feet each. How could the reviewer know that all of those items were really only 2 cubic feet, if she is being lied to by her own co-workers? And there was no way for me to know on pickup day, either: you get to see a list of your items, but not how many cubic feet are being claimed for them. The review dragged on for months, but eventually they refused to refund that extra money the pickup foreman had squeezed out of me. So do not trust this company. I will never be a customer of theirs again, and would not recommend them to anyone. If you do become a customer of theirs, try to protect yourself (if you can) and don't leave yourself vulnerable, as I was, on pickup day; leave yourself a way out if they try to pressure you.

Trusted IVL to move our house hold goods from Louisiana to England. This company has terrible customer service annd communication. Wasn’t informed when my shipment left the port. Had to call multiple times to find out that the shipment didn’t make its original date and had been pushed back. We were not informed of possible port fees until shipment was already underway. The fees were almost hidden in the email after the signature block. After our shipment had cleared customs the contracted company could not reach our shipment until 4 days after causing us to incur extra port charges. Will have to pay almost $1000 extra in port and extra equipment fees after paying $11,000 for the move itself. Do not use this company

TLDR, this has been an awful company to work with. If you’re going to spend thousands of dollars, be sure you’re partnering with an ethical company that has customer service/satifications as one of their main values. I picked IVL because they were on a Forbes list. They probably paid to be on said list, but I went for it anyway. I hope you don’t make the same mistake I did. Picture this: All of your personal belongings are in the possession of a team people/company actually don’t care. The proess has been chaotic, unorganized, and the customer service has been terrible. I could not recommend this company less. My whole experience [to date] below: 1 - I've had multiple [4] "Account Managers" since originally planning my move beginning in November 2023. All of them have been extremely difficult to contact when getting items added/removed from my invoice. When my invoices were updated, most times there were errors and I had to go back and correct the rep I was working with. 2 - When the movers arrived, they instantly broke my bed frame when taking it apart. They told me they "found the bed like that", although the bed frame was 3 years old and had never been moved. They left a fragment of wood from the bed on the ground further confirming that they broke my bed after lying to me. Bear in mind that not only did they leave fragments of wood from the disassembly, they also left the place full rolls of tape, paper, and random garbage that they brought in. 3 - Writing in to my Account Manager making her aware of this issue was impossible. Only after calling into their general support line did I get an email response. The person I chatted with (who was very nonchalant about the whole situation) has now introduced me to a member of their claims department, who is now my new point of contact. He’s been the only good representative I’ve had. I guess 4th times a charm. Although I’ve finally lucked out with a more responsive and competent member of their team, this doesn’t help the fact that they broke my bed frame and have offered no solution. Their solution: “Did you get 3rd-party insurance? Did you read the Bill of Lading? All we can offer you is $0.60 per/pound. Imagine my $1,000 bed frame is 100lbs. Lucky for me, IVL is going to compensate me $60 for damage they caused before the move even started. 4 - The day before my move I get a call from the truck driver saying he’ll be at my storage unit tomorrow. He says “well, it doesn’t look like this place is 18-wheeler accessible”, although I’ve confirmed multiple times with my storage facility. Their recommendation is that I find another storage unit because they need to be in Maryland tomorrow. I guess f*** my stuff, right? Whoever you are, I hope you save yourself a headache (and some money) and don’t choose IVL. Like every purchase, when you spend a lot of money on something, you expect a good product. From the booking of the move, to the move itself, and the customer in between, this is a bad product. Buyer beware.

Note: I'm reposting this review because International Van Lines abandoned their original Trustpilot changed and changed the name to a fictional company (American Movers), presumably to try and escape all the bad reviews, as well as the fact that they got flagged for posting fake positive reviews (Which they sure seem to be doing again!). Here's my story: International Van Lines is the worst company I have ever done business with in my entire life, to the point where their disastrous handling of my move was genuinely traumatic for me, and I haven’t been able to write this review until now, six months later. It’s still hard. Short version: They lied about the timeline, refused to tell me when my stuff was arriving once they had our money, delivered it a month late, lost and destroyed a substantial amount of belongings, and then created an intentionally impossible to complete claims process so that we couldn’t even make a claim on the damage. Long version: International Van Lines was hired to move my belongings from California to Massachusetts, with a delivery date of November 15th. We arranged to have the stuff picked up on October 30th, and the sales representative assured us that it rarely took more than a week to arrive. The first sign of trouble was when the contracted movers showed up and had a bunch of terms that were not in the original moving contract with IVL, including that they weren’t liable for damage to various types of furniture; this despite the fact that the moving company is owned by IVL. We were forced to either accept the new terms or lose half of the substantial ($6000+) cost of the move. Once they had the stuff, IVL suddenly changed their tune, refusing to confirm they would deliver on the 15th as agreed, and insisting that was an “estimate” and they had up to 30 days to deliver after that. The contract specified that they would “make every possible effort” to deliver on the 15th, but they did not even pretend to try. My stuff did not depart California until November 26th, 11 days after it was supposed to arrive; International Van Lines still refused to provide an estimate for delivery when the truck left. I had moved on the 14th and was forced to reside in an empty apartment for weeks, even as I started a new job. When I asked them what had happened, they said “Nothing has failed” and it was all going according to plan, in direct breach of the contract. My stuff ultimately did not arrive until Friday, December 9th, and we were given only 48 hours notice (with the driver calling us from Virginia and asking where our stuff was going, apparently not even being told the delivery destination!) The stuff that arrived was a disaster; frames that they had specifically promised to wrap were unprotected and damaged, backs of shelving ripped, a handmade table with a shattered base and internal damage that ultimately cost $300 to fix (and would have been another $200+ for all the scratches), a broken TV stand, etc. The stickers they used to keep track of which boxes were which had fallen off, so they had no system to determine what actually arrived; multiple boxes were missing, and the items were never recovered. The movers then damaged both the couch and the bedframe assembling them, and did not inform me; I would only discover later when the bed started collapsing with me in it, and I found twisted metal because they hadn’t bothered to install any of the support screws and struts. Meanwhile, the futon was not only misassembled such that it was unusable as a futon, but they stripped the bolts; we can’t fix it, and we’ll have to destroy it in order to get it out of the apartment. Finally, they outsourced the claims process to a company that built an intentionally impossible process: websites that only showed one part of the process at a time, and wouldn’t save your work, requiring hours and hours of form-filling and forcing you to restart, combined with asking increasingly absurd questions (like the purchase date for every item); the alternate was mailing in a package, which other reviews all attested they would pretend to not receive so they wouldn’t have to pay out a claim. We were not able to make any claims on the damaged and missing items, despite me spending a good 6 hours on the claims process before realizing it was futile. I have never felt so victimized. I deeply regret doing business with International Van Lines, and to this day - six months later - am finding new damage and missing items from the move.

STAY AWAY FROM THIS COMPANY. What a ride it has been... from start to finish. Quotation: extremely pushy, lack of information. They never asked for the measurements of anything we were going to ship. Why? Because the quote value means very little in the end. They take your stuff and then send you the invoice. You want your staff shipped, you pay. Invoice: they sent us an invoice that was completely off with items and services we never requested. They corrected it in the end but there was quite a bit of back and forth. Extra costs are also to be expected at delivery. Shipment: a little over 6 months for a move from Las Vegas NV to Rome Italy; initial estimate: 8 to 12 weeks max. They offered a ridiculous $300 compensation for a $12.5k international move. Pick-up and delivery: they work with local partners who have a much more ethical approach to business. We had a good experience with teams at pick-up and delivery: fast and professional. All this led me to do some post-delivery research online to find out that International Van Lines used to operate under a different brand: The American Movers. You can look them up on Trustpilot. They had an issue of reputation, insomuch that Trustpilot had to close their original page due to fake reviews. Hence, they went through some sort of rebranding and, as of today, have a 4.6 score on trustpilot from 48 reviews. Likely all fake again. They are unprofessional at best, scammers for most people who do not understand the complexity of international moves. We experienced the majority of the issues people reviewed them on. TERRIBLE EXPERIENCE. People at IVL we have worked with: Jason, Paula, Lisa, Nico. Just so you all know. International moves are not easy but I am sure you can find much better companies out there. We are glad our stuff made it to Rome in the end and decided to not even bother filing a claim for the things that got broken and damaged. It would just be a waste of time.